Many fantastic stories in literature and cinema are based on the fact that an epidemic swept across the Earth and brought terrible consequences on a planetary scale. Previously, this was not so difficult to imagine. Then, it seems, humanity realized its strength in medicine, but recently voices have been heard that it is precisely man-made and adapted diseases that can once again threaten all of humanity. But remember the lessons of the past.
2018 marked the 100th anniversary of the Spanish flu epidemic. At one time, this terrible disease killed more people than two world wars. And this is just a year!
According to rough estimates, at the beginning of the 20th century, from 50 to 100 million people died from this dangerous form of influenza. Then the Spanish woman suddenly disappeared, as if she was just fulfilling her destiny, and until 1997 no one heard of her.
What happened and is there a chance of getting Spanish flu today?
The history of the Spanish woman dates back to March 11, 1918. It was on that day that the cook at the Funston military training camp, located southwest of Manhattan, Kansas, felt the first symptoms of the disease. Waking up in the morning, Albert Gitchell (Albert Gitchell) felt an unbearable sore throat. The man, barely keeping his feet from weakness, went to the first-aid post, where the nurse measured his temperature.
The mark on the thermometer reached 40. The patient was immediately sent to the isolation ward.
Promotional video:
Less than five minutes later, there was another knock on the door of the infirmary. A man with similar symptoms appeared on the doorstep. Then another one, and then another and another … By noon, the Funston hospital had accommodated 107 patients suffering from terrible sore throats, chills and coughs. Most likely, the chef Albert "accidentally" infected them by sneezing on cooked food.
There is also a version that the first carrier of the infection was actually a pig. According to scientists, the meat of a sick animal with the H1N1 virus strain that caused the Spanish flu could be used for cooking in the Fanston kitchen. However, this is just speculation. Albert Gitchell is officially considered patient zero.
What happened to Albert Gitchell next? By some miracle, the man managed to survive and live a long and happy life, which cannot be said about those people who later became victims of his "sneeze".
Only in the 60s did researchers finally manage to calculate the number of victims and the role of the epidemic in the destruction of humanity. In 1918-1919, for 18 months, during which the Spanish woman “walked” on the planet, 50-100 million people died, which is approximately 3-5% of the total population of the Earth. About 550 million people have become infected with the virus - 29.5%.
In the Funston camp, five hundred military personnel have been diagnosed with severe influenza and several have died. However, at the beginning of the 20th century, this was a common thing, so all recovering and even slightly coughing soldiers were sent to other units, and then directly to the fronts of the First World War. It is because of this that the terrible virus spread so quickly around the world, especially in Europe.
On June 29, 1918, the General Inspector of Health of Spain made a report in which he spoke about an epidemic of an unknown disease that swept the country. It is not clear why the Spaniards made God so angry, but they had the worst of all in those difficult times.
Headlines about new victims of the deadly virus continued to pop up in local newspapers. In order to somehow protect residents, the government introduced a special order: all schools were closed, any public gatherings were suppressed, and the entrance to public transport without a gauze bandage was prohibited.
However, despite all efforts, the infection spread with surprising speed and even reached the King of Spain Alfonso XIII. Of all cases, only 5% were fatal, but the mass rate of infection through personal contact with sick people reached 90%.
As it turned out later, in those days the Spaniard was already quietly "walking" on the front lines of the First World War - hundreds of British, French, German and American soldiers with symptoms of this disease were in hospitals. However, the countries involved in the hostilities preferred to keep silent about the epidemic so as not to undermine the already shaky fighting spirit of the soldiers.
Only Spain has honestly announced the start of a pandemic. Hence the virus got its name - "Spanish flu", or Spanish flu. It was also called "blue death", as with the development of the disease, the faces and bodies of patients acquired a strange blue tint.
In October 1918, there was practically no corner on the planet where patients with a Spanish woman would not meet. This is because the soldiers of the First World War moved around the world - they returned home or moved to other fronts, thus dragging a deadly disease along the way.
The Spanish woman did not touch only the Brazilian island of Marajo in the Amazon delta. Not a single case has been reported here.
Telephone operators gargle to prevent influenza. London, 1920.
In some other countries, on the contrary, mortality from influenza virus has reached its peak. For example, in India, 17 million people died in less than a year, which amounted to about 5% of the total population. In the same period, 21% and 22% of the population died in Iran and Samoa. Residents of states with poorly developed medicine were at particular risk.
If the epidemic usually takes people with the weakest immunity - the elderly and children, then in the case of the Spanish flu, everything was different. The victims of the disease were mainly healthy men 20-30 years of age and women capable of childbearing.
The terrible secret of the Spanish woman
Everything described above is truly terrifying, but it turns out that the Spanish woman has another, more terrible secret. "What could be scarier?" - you will be surprised. And the fact that the "blue death" virus is currently stored in several laboratories.
In 1997, the body of a woman who died from a Spanish woman 80 years ago was unearthed in glaciers in Alaska. Due to the corpulent physique of the woman, her lungs were preserved almost intact, thanks to which scientists managed to "extract" the Spanish flu virus from them. In 2005, scientists achieved a replication of it.
Thanks to a detailed study of the virus, many new things have been learned. First, it became clear why the epidemic was killing mostly healthy people. The thing is that the virus, getting into the victim's body, caused the so-called cytokine storm - an overreaction of the immune system, which triggers general tissue inflammation.
During this process, the human defense system "panics" and tries in every possible way to destroy the "enemy". In simple terms, immunity drops a bomb on its own territory. And if people with strong immunity have nuclear weapons in their arsenal, then the sick and the weak have old grenades and cannons with blank cartridges.
Roughly the same thing happens to patients with advanced stages of the Ebola virus. However, the disease becomes contagious only when its first symptoms appear, and the Spanish flu, like the usual flu, can spread several days before its carrier shows signs of illness. It is not surprising that in just 18 months this "weapon" managed to cut out the healthiest and most viable part of humanity at the root.
Deadly mutation
The question that worries most readers: "How and why did a common flu virus mutate into such a deadly form?" According to virologists, the main reason was the First World War. Under standard conditions, the influenza virus spreads slowly and does not "injure" its carrier too much, so that he can safely go to work, study, shop in a store, travel by public transport and live a normal life, without even suspecting that it infects dozens of others people.
But then, on the front lines, the situation was completely different. The disease did not affect the social activity of the patients in any way - in any case, they fought and moved along the front. In addition, the virus had to deal with healthy and strong soldiers, hardened in battle. What is the point of "pickling" the enemy if he can easily die from an enemy bullet or other disease? That is why the Spanish woman acted immediately and quickly, making the immune system scream in horror.
Most likely, the supervirus itself led to the disappearance of the environment that gave rise to it. According to most historians, it was the Spanish woman who ended the First World War. The exhausted armies of all countries were forced to conclude an armistice, since the soldiers were unable to resist the rival.
Effective sanitary measures, isolation of the sick and the extinction of the most susceptible to the Spanish age population groups have led to a widespread attenuation of the epidemic. However, immediately after the soldiers returned from the front line, some countries had a very difficult time, because they took the deadly flu home with them.
At the end of this article, I would like to answer another question that worries the reader: "Why did the bodies of patients with Spanish flu turn blue?" To find out, it is worthwhile to understand in more detail how influenza works.
Pathologists who performed autopsies on people with Spanish flu reported seeing "something terrible" inside. The disease affected almost all organs, which became inflamed and stopped working. The hardest blow fell on the lungs.
It became clear that the blue appears due to oxygen starvation, since the decaying human lungs could not function normally and saturate the blood with the necessary amount of oxygen. Because of this, the faces of the victims of the Spanish women often resembled those of the hanged.
In conclusion, we want to talk about several famous personalities who managed to survive this terrible disease.
Franz Kafka. The story of a writer suffering from tuberculosis only confirms the version that the Spaniard “kept alive” people with weak immunity. Kafka picked up the Spanish flu in 1918, but soon began to recover. In the meantime, tuberculosis, which had opened a year earlier, worsened and ultimately became the cause of his death.
Edvard Munch. The author of the famous painting "The Scream" had a Spanish flu when he was 55 years old. Again, the Norwegian artist had a rather fragile health, but was able to recover and live to 80 years old.
Walt Disney. At one time, the Spaniard, one might say, saved the life of the famous cartoonist. When the man caught an infection, he was just preparing to go to the front, but due to a sharp deterioration in his health, he ended up in the hospital. Finally healed, Walt Disney found that the war was over.
Lilya Brik. It is not known for certain whether the girl was sick with a Spanish flu or it was an ordinary flu. However, there are letters that lead historians to this idea. In one of these, Mayakovsky wrote to his beloved: “Liska, Lichika, Luchik, Lilenok Lunochka, Lasochka, Sweetheart Baby, Sunshine, Kometochka, Zvezdochka, Baby, Baby Darling Kitten Kitten! I kiss you and your Spanish woman (or rather, a Spanish woman, because I don't want to kiss Spanish women). I send you all my nonsense. Smile Kitty."
The coherent history of the origin, development and end of the influenza epidemic in 1918 is just the most popular hypothesis today.
There are scientists who, for example, believe that the H1N1 flu had been on the planet for a couple of years by the time Funston appeared in the American camp. It originated in a remote province of China and was brought to Europe by Chinese mercenaries who worked on the construction of French military fortifications.
And there are some experts who argue that the Spanish flu was by no means over in the winter of 1918. There was another wave of the epidemic in the spring of 1919 and separate outbreaks in different parts of the Earth right up to 1921.
Finally, some historians do not acknowledge the existence of the deadly influenza virus in 1918 at all. They believe that the increased mortality of young people from colds at the end of the First World War was caused by the general weakening of the body of soldiers during life in cold trenches, wartime famine in the rear, widespread unsanitary conditions and widespread pneumonia. In general, the whole of humanity adhered to this version for quite a long time: the victims of the Spanish flu were simply attributed to the war until the end of the 20th century, when virology scientists took up the study of "superflu". Thus, this pandemic can be called the largest and most overlooked in the history of mankind.
And at the end of this article, it remains to answer the last question: why did the victims of the Spanish flu virus acquire a radical blue color? Doctors guessed about this quite a long time ago, since a smaller-scale, but quite obvious blue discoloration of the face and limbs is present in some patients with heart failure. This syndrome is called cyanosis and is caused by oxygen deprivation. In the case of the Spanish flu, the rapidly decaying lungs, which the virus attacked in the first place, could not saturate the blood with oxygen. In fact, the victims of the 1918 epidemic likely had the faces of those who were hanged.
Vlad Smirnov